It strange to me to see such dislike for the "earn your barony with your sword" part. I thought this is pretty common everywhere. We have no titles where I am from, but lots of the powerful people in the Balkans are descendants of warlords.
It's not that, it's the details. If you had a lot of armed men, sure you could claim some land, that's how it was done usually. But for local strongmen to invite "adventurers" in tiny parties to take over neighboring lands just sounds retarded.
It's a risky strategy on the Aldori. Invite an unknown force to upset the current balance of power. Which they themselves will only stand to benefit from. Of course that is assuming that this wild card that they are devoting resources to, will act in their interest.
That's not the point. This one time (the surprise!) Porky is right. "An unknown force" - a force of one level 1 murderhobo. Even the people you "have" with with you aren't truly yours. You dont have really have even the smallest retinue of your own when you come to Aldori. It has nothing to do with risky strategy or anything like that. That is retarded no matter how much you want to defend the plot of the game you clearly like.
I like it too btw.
>Even the people you "have" with with you aren't truly yours.
The people of whom you ally with are met under difficult circumstances. You save Linzi and Tartuccio from a small group of assassins. You prove yourself as a capable leader worth following during battle with Amiri. Depending on your choices during the fire, you prove yourself, again, as a capable competent leader while helping Valerie rescue the soldiers from the impending fire; then rushing to defend Lady Jamandi from an assassination attempt. Valerie not being much of a leader and more of a soldier who follows orders, will follow you based on the valor you showcased. Really the only odd ones who are questionable are Harrim and Jaethal. Harrim who preaches the end of times has no reason to follow you, as he welcomes death. Jaethal who is a undead should have no real reason to engage in the politics of living beings. I'll give you that. The rest of the would be allies died during battle with the assassins.
The situation is so dire in the Stolen Lands, that the Aldori are wiling to gamble on a small group of adventurers.
You completely miss the point - again. You came to aldori alone and they are not your people. They only join you later because of circumstances. But that's irrelevant. Its one thing to "gamble" to someone that make sense and stand a chance to actually do what he is expected to do, what a single level 1 murderhobo cannot possibly do. A second son of some completely unimportant noble or an adventurer with a an actual (small) retinue would make some sense at least. Not much but some.
The more basic thing is that the whole part of the plot where you build your own barony doesn't make sense under the assumption of a typical crpg gameplay - tiny group of murderhobos walking around and killing stuff. It simply doesn't, no matter how you spin it.
It could be adjusted to some degree by a human GM to make sense but by computer its impossible. That's btw the problem about most of the rpg modules that aren't strictly dungeon crawlers (and even then...). The ones that make it work somewhat (Planescape which i don't like but it did it) are rare.
